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A family member picked up the wrong jar at the supermarket and now we have a (small) jar of salted capers instead of the brined ones they wanted to buy.

We were wondering if we could somehow wash the salted capers and remove enough salt to put them in the brine from the previous jar and not notice the difference.

I think the capers might have absorbed the salt, and that they're unsalvageable, but who knows?

Zachiel
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1 Answers1

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Yes.

Brined capers also have a lot of salt, so you're not really trying to remove the salt, just dissolve it a bit. The way I've done this is to simply take out about 1/4 of the capers, add a tablespoon or so of wine vinegar, then fill the bottle to the top with water, shake, and wait a couple hours.

Alternately, if you want to use them immediately and they're just too salty: dump them in a sieve, rinse off all the exterior salt, and then dry. They will be somewhat different due to the lack of vinegar, but swappable in most recipes.

FuzzyChef
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  • The sieve method is what I normally use, but if you want to remove most of the salty flavor I suggest to soak them in water for a bit, then squeeze the water out. You can repeat this process a few times, but squeezing only once will go a long way in removing most of the absorbed salt. Rinsing off the exterior is necessary as well. – Vladimir Cravero May 29 '22 at 20:54
  • Shouldn't be a need to squeeze. Rinse off the salt, an soak them in a large-ish volume of brine of the currect salinity. Diffusion and osmosis will take care of the rest. – Scott Seidman May 30 '22 at 14:18
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    "at" a tablespoon? Is that a typo? Otherwise, it's not a sentence structure I recognize. – Zachiel May 30 '22 at 17:25
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    @Zachiel, probably "add"...? – paul garrett May 30 '22 at 18:30
  • @paulgarrett That's what I figure, but I'm just 99% sure. – Zachiel Jun 06 '22 at 09:28
  • fixed the typo at/add – FuzzyChef Jun 06 '22 at 17:24